whom she drew in to support her cause. This, in the boldest expression of the sublime, the poet images by certain stars shooting madly from their spheres: By which he meant the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, who fell in her quarrel; and principally the great duke of Norfolk, whose projected marriage with her was attended with such fatal consequences. Here again the reader may observe a peculiar justness in the imagery. The vulgar opinion being that the mermaid allured men to destruction by her songs. To which opinion Shakspere alludes in his Comedy of Errors :

"O train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,

"To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears!" On the whole, it is the noblest and justest allegory that was ever written. The laying it in fairy land, and out of nature, is in the character of the speaker, And on these occasions Shakspere always excels him-' self. He is borne away by the magick of his enthusiasm, and hurries his reader along with him into these ancient regions of poetry, by that power of verse which we may well fancy to be like what: -Olim Fauni Vatesque canebant."

WARBURTON. And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,] So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece:

❖་

"And little stars shot from their fixed places.”

MALONE.

160 Cupid all arm'd:] All armed, does not signify

dressed in panoply, but only enforces the word armed,

as we might say all booted.

So, in Greene's Never too Late, 1616:

JOHNSON.

"Or where proud Cupid sate all arm'd with fire." STEEVENS.

161. At a fair vestal, throned by the west;] It was no uncommon thing to introduce a compliment to queen Elizabeth in the body of a play. So, again, in Tancred and Gismund, 1592:

"There lives a virgin, one without compare,
"Who of all graces hath her heavenly share ;
"In whose renown, and for whose happy days,
Let us record this Pean of her praise."

Cantant. STEEVENS.

171. And maidens call it, love-in-idleness.] This is as fine a metamorphosis as any in Ovid': with a much better moral, intimating, that irregular love has only power when people are idle, or not well employed.

WARBURTON.

I believe the singular beauty of this metamorphosis to have been quite accidental, as the poet is of another opinion, in the Taming the Shrew, act i. sc. 1. "But see, while idly I stood looking on, "I found th' effect of love in idleness; "And now in plainness I confess to thee,

Tranio, I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio, "If I achieve not this young modest girl."

And Lucentio's was surely a regular and honest passion. It is scarce necessary to mention, that love in

idleness

idleness is a flower. Taylor, the water-poet, quibbling on the names of plants, mentions it as follows:

"When passions are let loose without a bridle,
"Then precious time is turn'd to love in idle.”
STEEVENS,

The flower or violet, commonly called pansies, or heart's ease, is named love in idleness in Warwickshire, and in Lyte's Herbal. There is a reason why Shakspere says it is, "now purple with love's wound," because two of its petals are of a purple colour.

TOLLET.

It is called in other counties the Three coloured violet, the Herb of Trinity, Three faces in a hood, Cuddle me to STEEVENS. you, &c. 178. I'll put a girdle round about the earth, &c.] This expression occurs in the Bird in a Cage, 1633: Perhaps, it is proverbial:

"And when I have put a girdle 'bout the world, "This purchase will reward me.”

Again, in Bussy d'Ambois, by Chapman, 1613: "To put a girdle round about the world."

And in other plays.

STEEVENS. 190. —I am invisible;] I thought proper here to observe, that as Oberon, and Puck his attendant, may be frequently observed to speak when there is no mention of their entering, they are designed by the poet to be supposed on the stage during the greatest part of the remainder of the play; and to mix, as they please, as spirits, with the other actors;

and embroil the plot, by their interposition, without being seen or heard, but when to their own purpose.

We meet with the word in Chaucer, in the character of the Monk, late edit. v. 184.

"What, should he studie, or make himselven

wood?"

Spenser also uses it, Eglogue III. March:

"The elf was so wanton, and so wode."

199.

"The name Woden," says Verstegan in his Antiquities, "signifies fierce or furious;" and in like sense we still retain it, saying when one is in a great rage, that he is wood, or taketh on, as if he were wood. STEEVENS. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant ; But yet you draw not iron,-] I learn from Edward Fenton's Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature, bl. let. 1569, that-" there is now a dayes a kind of adamant which draweth unto it fleshe, and the same so strongly, that it hath power to knit and tie together, two mouthes of contrary persons, and drawe the heart of a man out of his bodie without offendyng any parte of him." STEEVENS.

227. Nor doth the wood lack worlds of company ;] The same thought occurs in the 2d Part of King Henry VI.

"A wilderness is populous enough,

"So Suffolk had thy heavenly company.”

Again, in Marston's Dutch Courtezan, 1605:
"So could I live in desert most unknowen,
"Yourself to me enough were populous.”

MALONE.

233. The wildest hath not such a heart as you] "Mitius inveni quam te genus omne ferarum."

See Timon of Athens, act iv. sc. 1.

Ovid.

"The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.”

S. W. 255. Where ox-lips] The ox-lip is the greater cowslip.

So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 15.

"To sort these flowers of showe, with other that

were sweet,

her meet."

"The cowslip then they couch, and th' oxlip for STEEVENS. 255. Quite over-canopy'd with luscious woodbine,] Thus all the old editions.

On the margin of one of my folios an unknown hand has written lush woodbine, which, I think is right.

This hand I have since discovered to be Theobald's. JOHNSON. Shakspere uses the word lush in The Tempest, act ii. "How lush and lusty the grass looks? how STEEVENS.

green}"

Both lush and luscious are words of the same origin.